


Is There Anybody Out There

by alexiel_neesan



Series: Survie [4]
Category: DCU
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Wordcount: 500-1.000, dead bodies, urban survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Direct follow up to “Feast Or Famine”.</em> — Some things about Gotham and surviving as seen and told by Jason Todd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is There Anybody Out There

 

Jason missed music. There was a shit ton of things he really missed, not that he had ever made a list because that shit was fucking depressing, but music was damn near top. One guy at Base Camp had a guitar and knew how to play it, but it just wasn’t the same. There wasn’t a lot of feelings left to sing or play, either.

Music’d have came in handy right about now. The streets were deserted, too silent. It felt like a good place to have some AD/DC to play, Highway to Hell, to stay with the classics. Maybe some Pink Floyd; “The Wall”, _Is There Anybody Out There_. This far from Base Camp and the park, and the others relatively big camps, there had been next to no street cleanup. He and the two volunteers —Casey, had been a paramedic at Gotham Central, and Indra, formerly of GCPD— had had to climb on top of crashed cars and overturned bins, pieces of concrete and glass and metal taking over the streets. All they could hope for was that it was still stable, and that nothing would suddenly sink under their steps. It happened. There were sinkholes up north, before the broken bridge, passing through asphalt and pipes and long condemned subway lines like holes to the underworld. Not that hell was too far from here, if you asked him.

They had set up for the East Side Docks almost as soon as he had came back with news from the sightings —Drake had accepted the recon mission too easily, in Jason’s opinion, even with sleep deprivation and the prospect of an untouched cache; it only had been rumors, and yes he was excited about them, but Drake never caved in that easily— the darkness of the night setting down on them too fast. It wasn’t cold enough that sleeping outside, back to back, would be a problem. A fire from what they could grab from the nearby buildings and a watch, Jason first then Casey then Indra, in the rumble and the damp dust, and when the darkness lifted they’d set up for their goal. Jason hadn’t know about that one cache —there were many of those places he hadn’t and still didn’t knew about. Good thing Drake knew all about those. Even at the rate they were going through supplies, they had a few years before food became a serious problem, and if his tentative talks with Ivy were going in the same way, they’d maybe manage to grow some edibles before that.

It was better not to think that much about the future. It wasn’t what he did anyway, he could just remain the messenger and leave the fucking depressing shit to Drake; Replacement was good at that. Live day to day, everyone was like this now.

They found the cache. It was still in fairly decent conditions, even if it was underground. Everybody had turned claustrophobic. Living in a city that could topple on your heads at any moment did that. They took on as much as they could, leaving some space in their packs for the gallons of gas they’d take from the cars they had tagged earlier in the trek.

Jay spotted a flutter of movement, when they emerged back into the street. Nothing much, just something moving— a curtain from a broken window, maybe a bird— but high up, in one building that still looked in good shape. He motioned to Casey and Indra, and they fanned out, covering each other. The building was in pretty good shape inside too, they found. And signs it had been, maybe even still was, inhabited —a pile of trash in the stairs, drawings on the walls, doors marked with names that opened on empty rooms. They climbed cautiously, checking for traps, unwilling to repeat the disaster that had killed two of them and had almost taken Jason’s face away.

It turned to a definitive “had been” when they entered the floor there had been movement on, Jason’s first, Casey’s and Indra’s rifles sweeping the room behind him. The room was filled with bodies, in groups. One in a chair, two embraced at its feet, another with its head resting on the seated one’s legs. Four entwined together on the floor, their back to the wall. Others seated in the same fashion, all over… He could see that… they weren’t all adult bodies.

He heard Casey’s quiet sigh in the silence, the strap of Indra’s rifle shifting on her coat. He could see that… the bodies… none of them died of natural causes.

“It’s old.” Indra broke the silence. They could see that. It didn’t smell, either- didn’t smell any worse than usual.

“Can you take a guess how long?” Casey and Indra both shook their heads. “… let’s see if there’s anything we can grab.” He looked over the room, one last time. “I’ll be on the roof.”

Nothing changed, on the roof. He hadn’t seen what had caught his eye from the street in the… room below, and there was nothing on the roof either. It felt… he could admit that he missed it, running roof to roof, having this part of Gotham only for him —yes, there was the rest of the Bats, but it didn’t count. One more thing he missed.

He missed the flutter of dark capes on the roofs he was giving his back to.  



End file.
